Drop testing a Surface from a moving vehicle

You may have seen the drop test that the Surface team performed recently with a group of press in the labs here in Redmond. Well, a friend of mine just did a drop test of his own from a moving vehicle (unintentionally I may add).

Kurt Shintaku is a pre-sales tech guy based in Los Angeles and when he went to collect pizza, he left one package on the roof as he drove off. He detailed this on his own blog and has given permission to repost here.

I wrote this up seeing as I’m sure many others have done something similar with their tablets:

‎30 min ago, I left a pizza joint, freshly loaded w/ $37 in lunch for my family… and I left my Surface/64GB on the roof of my car.

I guess it stayed there for several blocks as I sped down a main thruway before I made a lane change on Westwood Blvd & it lost its grip, slid off the top, & careened off the side of my car into the middle turn lane. (sob) Several onlookers watched in horror as the device toppled corner-over-corner finally resting a lane over from where I was.

Then a car going the opposite direction drove over it while making a left turn. (!!!)

Now as a pre-sales tech, I freaked. The Surface was my personal unit & this was no “hey-let’s-test-drop-the-unit-from-4-feet-and-see-what-happens” on-stage demonstration: This was a hardcore, real-life, on-asphalt, gutcheck test of the unit’s durability. In a geekpanic, I stopped my car in the middle of the road and ran out to find it. A pedestrian shouted its location having watched the whole thing happen, then asking, “Damn dude – is it okay?”

While it was ‘run over’, I don’t think the other car’s tires ever actually hit the unit since I didn’t see tread marks. (Thank goodness)

Besides 6-7 hard nicks on the magnesium casing & lots of scratches to the backside paint (click photo to the right to see the detail of the damage) … THE GLASS IS FULLY INTACT & DEVICE COMPLETELY FUNCTIONAL.